“What happens if, in three years time, Iran has a nuclear weapon,” Mr Carter asked. “I’m not sure that is going to happen, but if it does, what do we do? They are rational people like all of us in this room. Do they want to commit suicide? I would guess not. So what we have to do is talk with them now and say to them we want to be their friends.

Twenty-five years ago we cut off trading with Iran. We’ve got to resume trading to show Iran we are friends.”

Mr Carter also criticised President George Bush, saying it was a “serious mistake and terrible departure” from the actions of previous US presidents not to engage with countries with which they differed. “The president of the administration in Washington is the first one to have ever done this and I think we close off ourselves from any sort of rational accommodation of the views of other parties in order to reach out on major goals,”

“What kind of peace do we seek? Not a PAX Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave.

I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children — not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women — not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.” – John F. Kennedy (1963)

Beautiful and true, these words come from the website of Shirley Golub (www.shirley08.com), who’s taking on Rep. Nancy Pelosi in San Francisco, over Pelosi’s refusal to begin impeachment proceedings against the President.

Here is the most heroic story you’ll read all day. I excerpt just a couple of comments from ever-excellent DemocracyNow! Do click thru to the whole story here.

At tremendous price, a former Israeli Army pilot and a former Fatah fighter long imprisoned by Israel stand for peace and against revenge.

AMY GOODMAN: In the midst of this deepening crisis, I spoke to an Israeli and Palestinian peace activist: Yonatan Shapira and Bassam Aramin. They are from a group called Combatants for Peace that’s made up of former fighters from both Israel and Palestine. Bassam Aramin spent seven years in an Israeli prison, was an armed member of Fatah, the Palestinian political faction once led by Yasser Arafat. Bassam’s ten-year-old daughter Abir died one year ago after being shot by Israeli soldiers while she was on her way home from school. Yonatan Shapira is a captain in the Israeli Air Force and Black Hawk pilot squadron—well, he was. In 2003, he authored the “Pilots’ Letter,” refusing to participate in attacks against Palestinians. . . .

YONATAN SHAPIRA: [W]e decided that it’s important to refuse, but just refusing to be part of something illegal and immoral and just refusing to be part of war crimes is not enough. You have to try to fix the wrongdoing that you were part of. And then, with many other people who refused to military service and to be part of the occupation in the Israeli side and Palestinian ex-fighters in the Palestinian side, people who were many years in Israeli prisons, we formed this group, which we called “Combatants for Peace.” . . . Read the rest of this entry »